Yeah, and my PC would say I am God because I built it. It has a soul, of sorts, too. It died once and I transfered that soul complete with all its knowledge and personality into a new (and better) body.
Except they have a real god, in a “Let there be light” sort of way:
http://tfwiki.net/wiki/Primus
Who would technically be our god as well. Whether or not they are “programmed” is basically a fate vs. free will question.
One of my ex-girlfriends when I first met her I was hitting on her hardcore. It was early in the morning, around Sunrise at a loft party in Queens. I was wearing a Decepticon T-shirt.
My friend Charlie came over and started fucking with my flow on purpose. He asked me, “Aren’t the Decepticons the bad guys? Why are you wearing a shirt with the bad guys.”, which got the attention of her hippiness and she started getting into that and without missing a beat I said, “That’s just Autobot propaganda. The Decepticons are oppressed freedom fighters.”
I ultimately got the girl. She liked my twisted style, for a little while anyway. 
Maybe the decepticon was some sort of Adolf Eichman, found hidden after several years…although he DID get a trial
As Grumman points out, they’re all Transformers. Belonging to different factions. It also seems apparent that not all Decepticons are “evil”, and some may even have been coerced into becoming Decepticons just like there is at least one example of one being coerced into becoming an Autobot.
There is absolutely no way that killing/destroying a transformer is akin to shutting off/destroying a regular machine. It is clearly established that they are a mechanical life form, sentient, with political and moral codes, and with a religious mythos in their culture. They also have a full range of emotions, not being completely rational. Claiming that killing one isn’t immoral is very, very racist and immoral in itself.
From the evidence we get, the Autobot/Gvt death squad is hutning down and executing other Transformers that have picked the “wrong” side (be it by choice or not). Also note that at no point during the hunt and execution did Optimus Prime or anyone try to communicate with the victim. There was no warning, no demand of surrender, nothing.
Assuming the victim knew of their methods, his only rational choice is to hide, and if found out, do everything to escape. Arguing that he should have contacted the Autobots/Gvt to try and surrender or get a truce seems very unrealistic, considering they seem to kill non-Autobot Transformers on sight with no attempt to communicate.
This Transformer was hiding from the death squads, not causing any trouble as far as we know. Perhaps even being of service as a construction vehicle. He was brutally hunted down and murdered by the leader of the so called “good robots”, with the support of the US Army acting on foreign soil. At best Optimus Prime is a mercenary and a murderer, at worst, he’s a genocidal maniac.
Established how? In their instruction manual? NPC’s in my daughter’s Xbox 360 games display emotions, don’t always act rationally, and follow different religions or political paths as well. Are they “alternate life forms” too? The things (and that’s all they are) have trememndously sophisticated programming in place to believably mimic human responses is all. They’re no different from a Terminator or one of Saberhagen’s Berserkers in the end. Calling Optimus Prime a mercenary or a genocidal maniac is completely missing the point. He’s nothing but a technologically advanced weapon; as such he has no innate moral value. Who aims “him,” and at what target, is where you start talking about morals and ethics.
This is obviously a massive topic in itself, that I’m sure there’s been many threads on.
You’re right that acting as if conscious does not guarantee consciousness.
OTOH it’s wrong to assume that they aren’t conscious because they are machines. The human brain is a machine; an electrochemical machine.
And certainly if machines like the transformers existed, that exhibited all the signs of consciousness, we would generally assume that they’re conscious until proven otherwise. This is partly human nature (I assume everyone around me is conscious, despite lack of proof) and partly our morality (we assume that dogs feel pain, because the alternative POV could cause needless suffering).
Very few human beings are actually conscious. Most people are merely playing out programming. So it’s an arbitrary distinction, just a humanocentric point of view, that sentience means, ‘Appears superficially like a hominid biped.’
You’re just saying that because you’re programmed to.
That being said, I think something worth noting here is that Prime was chasing a Constructicon. Now, we know, Constructicons are among the most dangerous and evil Decepticons, even ignoring their ability to combine into Devastator. Depending on the universe, they built Megatron, destroyed Crystal City, and led the assault on Autobot City in 2005. Further, it was Bonecrusher who advocated the ‘survival of the fittest’ strategy that chucked the wounded Cons out of Astrotrain’s hull to die.
They are cruel and foul beings. Prime was doing nothing more than hunting down the equivalent of (insert obvious Nazi). It was dangerous, but nothing compared to the long term potential of having a Constructicon working in (and infecting) construction.
The last time someone let that happen, we got Trypticon.
(warning, tongue slightly in cheek, multiple universes conflated. Further, the real answer is Michael Bay thinks wrecking ball testicles are funny, despite none of the vehicles involved having one wrecking ball, let alone two.)
+1 on michael bay being “evil” or at least a very highly paid action coordinator and notsomuch a storyteller. optimus prime himself, in the spirit in which he was envisioned, was not a villain.